They have come from halfway across the world and are kept under tight security and raised according to the strictest rules.
They are five pure red heifers without blemish who have never worked, given birth, been milked or worn a yoke.
These red heifers and the archaic ritual they were brought to Israel for stand at the heart of a convoluted effort by a segment of ultranationalist Jews to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam that has stood on a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem for more than 1,000 years, and replace it with a “Third Temple”.
This minority ultranationalist push flies in the face of Jewish scholarship, which rules that a “Third Temple” can only be constructed after the coming of the awaited Messiah to usher in the “Kingdom of God” – not to bring about the return of the Messiah to Earth.
Members of these “Temple Movement” groups are also pushing to perform Jewish rites in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in violation of the chief rabbinate’s longstanding prohibition of the presence of Jews at Al-Aqsa due to the holiness of the site.
Heifer prophecy
According to the Old Testament, the two Jewish temples that stood where the Al-Aqsa compound stands today were ritually pure as were all instruments, garments and people who served in them.
The first temple stood from 1000 to 586 BCE and the second from 515 BCE to 70 AD and the third temple is what ultranationalist organisations have been working towards for decades.
Palestinians have for decades feared Israeli attempts to take over Al-Aqsa, which is the direction Muslims used to pray towards before the Kaaba in Mecca. These fears have been particularly acute since 1967 when Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem along with the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the 1967 War. The growing Jewish presence in Al-Aqsa and frequent attacks by Israeli security forces on Palestinian worshippers in recent years have only increased those fears.
According to the reasoning of ultranationalist Jewish organisations like the Temple Institute, a “Third Temple” cannot be built until Al-Aqsa is destroyed and the compound is purified, along with garments, utensils and hundreds of men of a particular lineage who have been trained for the priesthood who all stand ready to serve in this temple.
The purification is through a mixture of ashes – of a sacrificed red heifer, red yarn, cedar wood and hyssop – with fresh spring water collected by ritually pure children who were born and raised under certain conditions. This ash mixture is believed to remain effective for up to 100 years and can be mixed with spring water as needed.
Israeli police raid the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and harass worshippers during Ramadan, on April 5, 2023
The search for these pure red heifers is not new and has been a main aim of the Temple Institute since its founding in 1987, with fundraising efforts to breed one through IVF and to search all over the world for one.
Until 2022, when five red yearlings were donated by an evangelical farmer from Texas, United States, and flown to Israel as “pets” to get around restrictions on importing live animals as livestock at the time.
There have also been efforts to secure and prepare a plot of land on the Mount of Olives, which overlooks the Al-Aqsa compound and would enable the priest overseeing the killing of the heifer to sprinkle her blood towards Al-Aqsa as detailed in the Bible.
Sacrifice imminent?
There are indications that the Temple Movement is preparing to sacrifice a red heifer with the support of the Israeli government, according to the Israeli NGO Ir Amim.
The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development circumvented protocols when initially seeking permission to import red heifers, Ir Amim noted in a report in August, an example of increasing government involvement as the US was not a country approved for the import of live animals from at the time.
Nonsense continued in the article, but explains a lot of all the trouble around Al Aqsa mosque.
